Tron Theatre, Glasgow
4 stars
June and Jane live in a world of their own in Kirsty Housley's curious
new play, directed by herself for Teg Productions and the Corn
Exchange, Newbury for last week's brief Mayfesto run. According to the
shock-horror headlines, outside there's a serial killer on the loose
attacking young women just like them. Even a quick trip to the
supermarket for a pint of milk becomes a potential murder scene.
Inside, the two siblings are safe, seemingly mirror images of each
other, who dress identically and role-play their mother's rape by a
butcher and their own subsequent birth. When Bob comes calling with
ice-cream for June, the games become a lot more dangerous and a whole
lot closer to home.
Set in a wooden box full of assorted sized flaps that open out onto the
big bad world outside and wallpapered to clash with June and Jane's
flowery frocks, Bandages takes the dark iconography of big-screen
psycho-sexual schlock-fests and turns them on their head. June and Jane
are damaged, both by their family history and their own insular
co-dependence, and the bloody conclusion provoked by Bob's appearance
has been an accident waiting to happen.
In what is essentially a post-modern gothic chamber piece first
developed at the National Theatre Studio, any slide into melodrama is
body-swerved by the eccentricities of both play and production.
Bernadette Russell and Sarah Thom's playing style as the sisters and
Henry Miller's as Bob veers towards a very English form of cut-glass
live art archness that resembles the knowing black comedy of The League
of Gentlemen. Bandages too is a strange and troubling little oddity
that might also be a cult in waiting.
The Herald, May 7th 2013
ends
Comments